Reflections, commentaries, critiques and ideas from 40 years experience in the fields of Community Development, Community Education and Social Justice. Useful tools and techniques that I have learnt also added occassionally.

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The name of this blog, Rainbow Juice, is intentional.The rainbow signifies unity from diversity. It is holistic. The arch suggests the idea of looking at the over-arching concepts: the big picture. To create a rainbow requires air, fire (the sun) and water (raindrops) and us to see it from the earth.Juice suggests an extract; hence rainbow juice is extracting the elements from the rainbow, translating them and making them accessible to us. Juice also refreshes us and here it symbolises our nutritional quest for understanding, compassion and enlightenment.

Tuesday, 28 June 2016

The (Western) Consumption Disease

Around a quarter of all deaths in Europe during the early-mid 1800s was due
to “consumption.” Since then, the disease has come to be understood, fought
against, and renamed. We now know it as tuberculosis. By 1950 its rampant
mortality was reduced by 90% in Europe.

Prior to the 20th century it was known as consumption because it consumed the
body of the sufferer – drastic weight loss was one of its more glaring
symptoms. Today, fortunately, tuberculosis (or simply TB) is largely eradicated
in North America, Europe, Australia, New Zealand, and Japan. Not so in
sub-Saharan Africa and most of Asia however, where it affects more than 750
people per 100,000 of the population. In some parts of these continents the
rate of infection can be 2,000 or 3,000 or more per 100,000.

The disease is so prevalent in Africa and Asia that in 1993 the World Health
Organisation (WHO) declared TB a “global health emergency.”

The Western Disease
In the west we may have eradicated TB but we haven’t got rid of the disease
of consumption. We’ve just transformed it. Our consumerist society is eating
away at our collective body just as surely as TB eats away at the individual
body. This western version of the disease of consumption has another name –
affluenza. Indeed, there are at least three books out with that
title.1
Yet, we are unwilling to talk about it. When we talk about solving the
climate change crisis the discussion often revolves around renewable energy
sources, green technology, and/or recycling. These, although laudable, all
address only one side of the equation – the supply side. We seem unwilling to
discuss the demand side - our rampant consumerism.

So, allow me to talk about it a little. Every year we extract 55 billion
tons of bio-mass, fossil fuels, metals and minerals from the earth. This is
expected to rise to 80 billion tons within the next four or five years. Much of
this is converted into stuff that we buy or consume in one way or another. We
buy it, and then what happens? 99% of what we buy is trashed within 6 months.
OECD countries generate over 2 kg of municipal solid waste per person –
per day! High levels of waste also occur in some of the
world’s poorest island nations, often because of that other favourite consumer
activity – tourism from rich nations.

Lets think about renewable energy. The saviour of the planet we hear from
some climate change activists. Is it? A few calculations suggest that pinning
our hopes to a sustainable world, where global temperature rise does not exceed
2 degrees Celsius, is a forlorn hope if all we do is convert to renewable energy
and green technology. Currently, the world average electricity consumption per
capita is 3 MWh per year. In western nations consumption is around 8 MWh per
person per year. Over 40% of this consumption is by industry with private
residences making up a little over one-quarter. Transport consumes just 1-2% of
global electricity.

One of the recent glad tidings coming from the renewables sector is that of
battery storage. Tesla and others have made tremendous strides in battery
technologies, and these are often highlighted. But, wait a moment. These
batteries use lithium. Our current rate of extraction and use of lithium is
around 40,000 tonnes per year. If we we want to power our new Prius or other
hybrid or fully-electric vehicle, plus store electricity from solar, wind and
other renewable sources, then by 2040 we are going to require 800,000 tonnes of
lithium per year. With known reserves of lithium we could manage that until
about the mid 2050s. This assumes too, that Bolivia, Chile, and
Argentina2 are going to allow rich foreign corporations to mine their
countryside.

Lithium mining is not without its environmental and social impacts. The
extraction of lithium from the salt planes of the Atacama Desert and elsewhere
requires a lot of water and the use of toxic chemicals. As these areas are
arid, the high use of water by lithium mining means that local communities and
flora and fauna in these area are deprived access to clean water. Already local
communities in northern Chile and those around the Salar de Hombre Muerto in
Argentina are claiming that lithium mining is contaminating local water sources
used by humans, livestock, and crop irrigation.

We Have To Talk About Consumption
Our global population is expanding (expecting to reach 9 billion people by
the middle of this century) and along with it the expectation of electricity by
those in the emerging economies. Certainly, renewable sources must be developed
and used. But, we cannot expect to continue doing so in the affluent way that
we presently do. We must do something about our consumption. Not just hold it
at present levels, but reduce it.

What if we had a bathtub that was overflowing? The majority of our present
thinking about climate change solutions is like building up the sides of the
bath to hold the water in, or maybe devising an automated, solar-powered, siphon
to transfer the water to another tub. When what we really need to do is turn
the tap off!

It is us, in the western world that need do something about our consumption.
This is not suggesting that it is simply up to the individual consumer to make
choices. Although the individual can take action to down-size, buy organic,
local goods, and swap their lightbulb for an eco-friendly one, the actions we
need are systemic. Western consumption is a disease of the whole cultural body,
and needs to be tackled holistically and using systems thinking.

But first, we have to start talking about it. We have to stop putting our
faith in technical solutions (even green ones). Like any disease we have to
start with a thorough diagnosis.

Notes:1. Affluenza is the title of books by: i) John de Graaf, David Wann,
and Thomas Naylor (2001), ii) Oliver James (2008), and iii) Clive Hamilton and
Richard Denniss (2005).

2. Between them, Bolivia, Chile, and Argentina contain over 50% of the
worlds known reserves of lithium.

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About Me

I have almost 40 years experience working (paid and unpaid, government and non-government) in community development/education and social justice fields. I have continued to keep myself abreast of philosophies and theories in these and related fields. This blogsite will offer ideas, thoughts, reflections on these fields as well as giving some tools and techniques. I don't pretend that these will be original but I do hope that they will be able to translate some of these diverse ideas into coherent forms accessible to workers in the areas.